At a glance, the name SimSensei sounds like something that could virtually teach you to be the next Ninja master. Alas, that dream is too far-fetched; SimSensei is actually a Kinect-powered virtual therapist that uses the motion recognition technology to read a patient’s body language, thus determining underlying anxiety, nervousness, happiness, or contemplation.
Developed by a team at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies, the SimSensei program is still in its early stages. The beta preview uses a virtual avatar that acts as your shrink, while the second half of the screen uses the Microsoft Kinect to detect changes in the patient’s face and body movements. SimSensei would only record the patient as he or she is verbally responding so the program could see how the patient physically reacts when they are answering questions. These body languages include patients leaning forward or backward on their chair, smiling, prolonged/lack of eye contact, and the directions in which the eyes move.
That’s not to say SimSensei is entirely robotic either. The virtual therapist is even programmed to “Hmm” at appropriate times as if to ponder a response, and guide the patient along their conversation depending on what he or she answers. The point is to make the program look and feel as natural as possible, but that’s also not to say SimSensei doesn’t sound kind of creepy. I may have not been to too many shrinks, but the sample session USC provided in the video below shows a conversation that lacks white noise, feels awkward, sounds a bit intimidating. We’re not sure what’s worse: Trusting a human stranger or a friendly…ish robot with your deepest anxieties.
SimSensei is part of the many programs being developed for the Association for Computing Machinery‘s contest. The competition would compare the programs to see which can most accurately diagnose a patient based on their body language, identifying the correct group of depressed patients from non-depressed ones. Hey, at least if you reveal all your deep, dark secrets to SimSensei or other virtual psychiatrists, you will never run the risk of bumping into them in the street or something equally embarrassing. Meanwhile, students studying psychology have another reason to go back to their dorm rooms and weep themselves to sleep tonight for having chosen a doomed career path. Good thing there’s a robot they can talk to that’s currently in development.
AI companies spend enormous amounts of time convincing us their technology is safe and secure. But what happens when those same companies become targets of increasingly sophisticated AI-powered attacks? Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is now facing that question. According to a Washington Post report, cybersecurity startup Cathedral discovered vulnerabilities that let its researchers access sensitive information in Anthropic's internal systems.
The researchers used AI agents to identify potential entry points in less than 12 hours. Interestingly, they didn't need to crack Claude itself. Instead, they exploited weaknesses in third-party business applications that Anthropic uses for everyday operations. Anthropic's security testing program disclosed the findings, which allows outside researchers to identify and report vulnerabilities.
Military working dogs charge into places the rest of us would flee. So, I understand why anyone would want to breed tougher, healthier dogs for the job.
Warhound, a new startup from Colossal Biosciences co-founder Ben Lamm and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, has stepped out of stealth with $200 million to clone and gene-edit working dogs for American troops, police departments, and emergency services (via TechCrunch).
AI can describe a picture, identify objects, and answer questions about what a camera sees. But when a blind user needs a quick answer, getting an entire spoken essay about the scene isn't exactly helpful. Researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have found that AI-powered visual assistance can leave blind users doing too much work to get the information they actually need.
The study, titled Say It My Way: Exploring Control in Conversational Visual Question Answering with Blind Users, examined how people interact with Be My AI, an AI-powered feature of the Be My Eyes app. The researchers found that users often received lengthy descriptions that didn't adequately address their immediate goals, forcing them to ask follow-up questions or find ways to steer the AI towards a more useful answer.